A Paper Town
by irishais
Summary: It starts as a truce, this letter-writing thing. Seifer and Rinoa, postgame.


**a paper town. **

_-irishais-_

1. (never think)

He writes a letter once a week.

They can't really be called letters, as he never takes up more than a few lines (and even then, can barely keep his words _on _the lines). Half the time he doesn't even sign them. So, basically, he writes a note once a week. A memo. A brief statement. It costs him forty-three cents to mail them, and the change from breaking the one-gil bill rattles around in the cup holder of his car as he drives away from the post office. He never uses the change; most of the time, he forgets it's there. He just keeps breaking bills and dumping the coins into that little space between the seats.

He never buys stamps in bulk. He doesn't believe in return address labels, just scrawls the address in the upper corner of the envelope. The envelopes themselves he bought in a box of fifty at the gas station down the street. The delivery address... he has it memorized. He's written it so many times that it would be surprising if he didn't. However, there's still a post-it note stuck to the refrigerator, and he always, always double checks.

Every week, he thinks that maybe he got the address wrong.

The replies are on garishly colored postcards, or on scraps of paper torn ragged at the edges. Once, she wrote him back on a receipt for $3.45, coffee and a plain bagel- no spread, from Kathy's Java. The postal system never fails- there is always one piece of personal mail in his box on Thursday afternoon. It's so routine, it's like she hand-delivers the letters.

There is never a suggestion that they meet up at Kathy's Java for coffee and plain bagels. It's an unspoken agreement. They don't call. They don't talk, unless it's through paper and ink.

It's no wonder that he feels strangely betrayed when one day she scribbles "miss you" at the bottom, just above her name.

_xx_

2. (if there's one thing that i know)

She misses a week because of the holidays, because she's trapped up in Esthar with insufferable-because-of-the-holidays Squall and his mad-with-winter-cheer father. Her words, not his. There's barely any time to sleep, much less write letters, she explains. Her note is longer than usual, a whole page of torn out notebook paper this time, with a translucent heart graphic in the background, pushing her big, bold writing into the foreground. She apologizes, too. _Apologizes, _because winter solstice happened and there were gifts to give and family to visit.

If it weren't for the neighbors' radio set to "jingle all the way" for twenty-four hours, he might have forgotten that it was the holidays.

She sends him the letter in a big brown envelope, and when he slices open the flap, a keychain tumbles out before the paper. It's a thick rubber mold, a red shape he knows all too well.

_I thought you might get a kick out of it._

He spends five minutes trying to work it onto the ring for his car keys, and when he finally gets it on, he wonders if maybe she was expecting something in return.

_xx_

3. (hear this please)

Sleep, work, sleep, work.

She misses another week, and doesn't explain why.

Seifer thinks that it's pretty ridiculous that he'd feel so disappointed by an empty mailbox on a rainy Thursday afternoon.

He writes a couple of lines anyway, and Friday comes and goes. The letter is still sitting on his counter when he comes back late that night, a girl's drunken laughter breaking the quiet of his apartment. When he stumbles out of bed at noon on Saturday, the envelope is still sitting there, unmailed.

He ignores it and makes a pot of coffee instead.

_xx_

4. (like you really mean it)

_Hey, _

_I haven't heard from you in a few weeks, so I thought I'd check in. Why aren't you responding? _

Her handwriting is the same.

He doesn't know why he would have been expecting anything different.

_I didn't get anything to respond to. _

There, he thinks. That should be enough.

He goes out on Friday to the post office. It is, after all, a truce they've made, this letter-writing thing. And it's strange, really, that even though he might be betrayed by a "miss you," he's got no problem with the invitation to lunch that finds its way into his mailbox the next week.


End file.
